Background:

As the founder and CEO of a staffing and consulting company called Veracord, Park Schutz has three priorities: grow his business, hire people traditionally excluded from the labor market, and facilitate work-life balance for his employees. Each of these objectives requires a secure, flexible, and affordable networking solution that lets his employees work from home. IT is not Park’s area of expertise—but without an IT Manager, it became his job.

Business challenge:

Veracord originally had one brick-and-mortar office that housed an internal server and five local employees. The remaining 17 employees all worked remotely. These remote employees used a patchwork of services to stay connected to Veracord’s office-based files and a proprietary application that ran on the office server.

Alternatives:

Park explored other remote access options like Dropbox, but it didn’t take long before he became frustrated with the inefficiencies of the tool. With Dropbox, for example, Park found that coordinating file transfers often added delays. He was also concerned about the security of the service, but wasn’t prepared for the complexity and cost of a hardware-based VPN solution. Park dropped Dropbox and searched for other alternatives.

Benefits:

Park estimates that he’s saving over $30,000 per year on office space alone. Personally, Park is saving about $600 per month on gas, and gaining back some valuable time to spend with his family. “I have three kids, so it’s important for me to spend less time commuting, and more time at home. Pertino not only gave me economic value, but it also had value to me personally.”